This article asks the question how post-exilic readers would have read 1-2 Samuel in Yehud. It answers the question by looking at ancient Mediterranean models of textual authority and education.

The iconography of the Horus cippus, an amulet popular in Egypt from the late Third Intermediate Period to Roman times (8th century BCE – 2nd century CE), is unexpectedly recapitulated in bronze “goddess plaques” of the 7-8th centuries CE made by Permian peoples – Finno-Ugric groups from the Ural region of northern Eurasia. The likely expla…[Read more]

The iconography of the Horus cippus, an amulet popular in Egypt from the late Third Intermediate Period to Roman times (8th century BCE – 2nd century CE), is unexpectedly recapitulated in bronze “goddess plaques” of the 7-8th centuries CE made by Permian peoples – Finno-Ugric groups from the Ural region of northern Eurasia. The likely expla…[Read more]

This essay explores how and why three early Christian figures–Epiphanius, Romanos the Melode, and Ambrosiaster–have, at various times, been imagined as former Jews. By applying a hermeneutics of conversion, this essay argues that the significance of these three Christians’ ex-Jewishness lies not in its historicity (or falsity) but in the way…[Read more]

This essay is an examination of Udjahorresnet’s Persian identity. Best known from the inscription on his naophorous statue now in the Vatican, Udjahorresnet was a high-ranking courtier in Egypt under the Saite pharaohs Amasis and Psamtik III, and subsequently under the Persian kings Cambyses and Darius. While his statue’s form, function and ins…[Read more]

The International Style is a theoretical model used to describe various objects from the Eastern Mediterranean Late Bronze Age that exhibit hybrid diagnostic features (iconography, media, form). Resulting in the inability for archaeologists over the past 150 years to identify cultural source. This paper is a reprint of the chapter on colour…[Read more]

in: R. Achenbach (Hg.), Persische Reichspolitik und lokale Heiligtümer. Beiträge einer Tagung des Exzellenzclusters «Religion und Politik in Vormoderne und Moderne» vom 24.–26. Februar 2016 in Münster (BZAR 25), Wiesbaden 2019, 209-255.

in: A. Berlejung/A.M. Maeir (Hg.), Research on Israel and Aram: Autonomy, Interdependence and Related Issues. Proceedings of the First Annual RIAB Center Conference, Leipzig, June 2016 (RIAB I) (ORA 34), Tübingen 2019, 347-372.

in: Welt und Umwelt der Bibel Nr. 92, 24,2 (2019) 36-43.

PhD thesis, Freiburg im Breisgau 1999. On political institution in the Phoenician coastal cities

On Babylonia in the Seleucid Empire

This paper is a new examination of the original find context of the Saqqara lion tables (CG 1321–2) in ‘Gallery C’, an underground structure in the Step Pyramid complex. The substructure may date to the 1st millennium BCE, and this structure was likely part of an embalming complex for the Apis or other sacred animals. The adjacent Western Galle…[Read more]

This paper is a new examination of the original find context of the Saqqara lion tables (CG 1321–2) in ‘Gallery C’, an underground structure in the Step Pyramid complex. The substructure may date to the 1st millennium BCE, and this structure was likely part of an embalming complex for the Apis or other sacred animals. The adjacent Western Galle…[Read more]

The Egypt Exploration Society archive contains unpublished pencil drawings by A. Klasens of seal impressions found in the Step Pyramid complex of Saqqara. Digitally inked versions of these drawings are published here for the first time. The seal impressions can be sourced to the Northern Galleries of the complex. The impressions were sealed on…[Read more]

The Egypt Exploration Society archive contains unpublished pencil drawings by A. Klasens of seal impressions found in the Step Pyramid complex of Saqqara. Digitally inked versions of these drawings are published here for the first time. The seal impressions can be sourced to the Northern Galleries of the complex. The impressions were sealed on…[Read more]

Review of: Jan J. W. Lisman, Cosmogony, Theogony, and Anthropogeny in Sumerian Texts. Vol. 409 of Alter Orient und Altes Testament. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2013. In Rosetta 18 (2015)

Review of: Michael B. Hundley, Gods in Dwellings: Temples and Divine Presence in the Ancient Near East, vol. 3 in Writings from the Ancient World Supplements. Bethesda: Society for Biblical Literature Publications, 2013. In Rosetta 20 (2017).

Study of inscribed Kassite cylinder seals held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Study of Old Babylonian Sumerian proverbs that speak on authority and how those same proverbs may subtly (or not quite so subtly) rebuke the king and established institutions of power.

A study of the nature of the udug and lama figures as seen in Mesopotamian (primarily Old Babylonian) incantations, as well as an overview of the nature of demons in Mesopotamia.